6 Ways to Improve the Live Chat & Bot Tools

[QaunainM]

I started using the Live Chat and Bot tools (awesome). Here are some ideas based on features I've used elsewhere that would make these two tools better.

1) Delay timers: These could be used throughout the live chat + chatbot, for example, options for setting timer delay before the welcome message appears and the ability to set delay timers before prompts or bot responses.

2) More colour change options: for example, the chat icon is only dark grey, we can't make a 2 colour custom gradient, can't add a background colour to bot response lists (so if I use light colours the text is impossible to read on those list buttons).

3) Reply via email: Currently, when the bot sends us an email, we can't reply to that email to respond to the chat/ticket, if we could it would be more efficient.

4) Disabling welcome message: Currently, the chatbot is text heavy as we have to use the live chats welcome message and then the bots first instead of using the Bots first message.

5) Capturing/storing more than one item per a bot message: Currently, we can only save one item per a message, i.e name, it would be a good idea to be able to capture more than one item per a message. 

6) Drag and drop interface for the chatbot creation: Something to think about in the product roadmap is the interface, would be good if it had a drop and drop ability along with options to clone or link a child message to multiple parent messages but with arrows. Similar to wireframing tools. 

[QaunainM]

Hey @QaunainM @clioi and all! Best practice on the Ideas forum is to limit one idea per submission so we can most easily track kudos and update everyone to the status of various posts. Some of the ideas mentioned here already have existing threads going that I will link below, and most of these comments are new and separate ideas. I encourage everyone here to search the existing posts to upvote, and if your idea is not present, to file a new separate post for each feature you have a need for so that the community can review it, thanks! I'll be closing this idea now to keep everything clean, so please do not add more ideas here, but as separate posts

• https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Timing-specifications-for-chat-launcher/idc-p/86106

• https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/More-Messages-Widget-Styling-Options/idi-p/13806

[#3]

I agree with the delayed timing. I don't want the chat box to pop up automatically. It would be nice to have the option to delay. 

[#4]

Upvoting ESPECIALLY for 

"4) Disabling welcome message: Currently, the chatbot is text heavy as we have to use the live chats welcome message and then the bots first instead of using the Bots first message."

It's very confusing that the bot is tied into the welcome message - would be nice to have two different 'openers' depending on whether it's a person or the bot saying 'hi.'

[#5]

6) Drag and drop interface for the chatbot creation:

Certainly not a fair comparison, but this is what HubBot's dev interface looked like BEFORE it was HubBot -- iow - when it was Motion.ai -- i.e., the company HubSpot purchased in 2017 and announced at INBOUND17 as their entrée, 'into the bot game'.

(see image)

This is the HubBot dev interface in Aug 2018 ...

(see image)

Point?

As you can see, it wasn't really fair to imply any connection whatsoever between Motion.ai (a beautiful dev platform) and its HubBot successor. We can only hope that HubSpot will DRAMATICALLY UPGRADE this interface before they shutdown Motion.ai on 31-Dec-2018. Ok, we can dream. haha

(see announcement banner on motion.ai)

[#6]

Yup, totally agree with you guys. 

They also need to improve the impact in terms of SEO as the Chat Bot will increase your website page size, and number of Http requests. I doubled my loading time since I've added the Hubspot Chat :/

I tried Tawk To in the past, and it was far lighter..

[#7]

In addition to a chat bot delay, it would be great if the automated chat bot didn't fire if the live person had started typing their chat response.

[#8]

Completely agree with these points, especially point 6. Even if the chat building tool was similar to how workflows are built in HubSpot, that would be a huge improvement. 

Also, the ability to re-use modules/messages. Currently, you can only us the same message multiple times if it;s conected to an if/then branch. Sometimes when I'm designing a chatbot, I want to gather the same information down different paths, and it's tedious to make a new chat message or add unnecessary if/then branches when I've already asked that question multiple times. 

[#9]

Drag & drop to re-order would make bot- building much easier and agree with other points too, and shame about 6, would be cool to see that properly integrated, thanks for posting. And Brian's request is a good one as well.

Having to click into branches makes getting an overview of the whole bot tricky. The interface approach posted in 6. seems to offer more insight.

Overall I do like the bot feature though, its great to have as a tool.

Couple more things I came across:

i. When selecting Country as an option, the bot offers the client all the countries in your list of 100+ buttons. This should be offered as a dropdown. Use case: I need to route sales requests to the sales people in the clients country.

ii. It's not possible to use a "," in a quick response. Eg "Yes, connect me to an agent".

[#10]

0.1) Time-based conversations.

If the conversation started outside normal working hours,  handoff to a different team or create a ticket.

Lack of this and Bot overriding standard support chat times and keeping it alive is severely frustrating our customers. Customers are waiting for an agent who is not there.

[#11]

and this as well @hroberts

[#12]

Writing on behalf of an user:

It would be a good option to choose the location of the chat icon in the page. At this moment, it appears in the bottom right in the page by default. Would be convenient if it is possible to select (for example) bottom left corner.

[#13]

agreed with @natsumimori

[#14]

Ditto - Location. Location Location. 

The bot is covering my scroll to top feature. Lumpy bumpy.

>> It would be a good option to choose the location of the chat icon in the page. At this moment, it appears in the bottom right in the page by default. Would be convenient if it is possible to select (for example) bottom left corner.

[#15]

Hey @QaunainM @clioi and all! Best practice on the Ideas forum is to limit one idea per submission so we can most easily track kudos and update everyone to the status of various posts. Some of the ideas mentioned here already have existing threads going that I will link below, and most of these comments are new and separate ideas. I encourage everyone here to search the existing posts to upvote, and if your idea is not present, to file a new separate post for each feature you have a need for so that the community can review it, thanks! I'll be closing this idea now to keep everything clean, so please do not add more ideas here, but as separate posts

• https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Timing-specifications-for-chat-launcher/idc-p/86106

• https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/More-Messages-Widget-Styling-Options/idi-p/13806

[#16]

Hi @hroberts ,

You delivered all of the items in the original post? I can't see any of them in my account.

Personally I find the notion of discussing every single addition related to a major feature a bit too cumbersome for us. In particular for early stage products such as chat which are missing a lot of improvements. In my company, this kind of management is handled by us and we take it upon ourselves to take feedback from our community and split them into individual tasks.

I'll repost the two features I had reported in the comments but I hope you will take the time to clarify if all of @QaunainM's original requests have been taken into consideration or if they will now be lost, and if its the latter, then please create separate posts in their behalf. Even @natsumimori, a hubspot employee, added the chat location request as part of this thread.

Here are my two feature requests from this thread as separaete issues in case someone in this thread wants to upvote:

https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Allow-quot-quot-in-quick-response-in-chatbots/idi-p/2...

https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Offer-country-as-a-dropdown-in-chat-bot/idi-p/215172

[#17]

Hi all,

Thank you for your perspective and feedback. I just want to add a final thought here to ensure that the reasoning behind moving this conversation to preexisting ideas was made.

The ideas forum is leveraged by our Product team as a home for feedback, thoughts, and feature requests to ensure that we are building what the people using HubSpot everyday, you all!, want to see.

The first guideline for using the ideas forum is to search for ideas that are similar to what you are looking to accomplish before creating a new idea.

Creating duplicate ideas doesn’t work towards the common goal of getting these ideas implemented, because it creates two separate conversations, which splinters your voice and input into multiple small conversations. One idea with 50 votes is going to go further than 25 ideas with two votes.

Additionally, one of the best things about engaging with a preexisting idea is that once you engage in an ideas thread, you’ll be notified of updates on that particular idea. In order for users to be in the loop for the ideas that they want to see, it is best practice to search, engage, and (when necessary) create new ideas in the ideas forum.

Regarding new requests that have been shared in this idea, if you would still like to see these elements implemented in the future, I encourage you to create new ideas for each specific element that you would like to see. Creating new, specific ideas (which haven't been requested before) will benefit you not only by ensuring that you are notified of updates on the idea, but also so the product team knows what specifically you want to see, and who is asking for this. When the product team can see who wants to see a specific feature, they can reach out to you for beta testing, early releases, and to get more direct feedback. Having feedback and ideas come from HubSpot users is one of the pillars of the Ideas Forum.

To summarize:
1. Timing: please continue the conversation here: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Timing-specifications-for-chat-launcher/idc-p/86106
2. Chat style: please continue the conversation here: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/More-Chat-Widget-Styling-Options/idi-p/13806
3. Email replies: Please create a new idea
4. Disable welcome message: Please create a new idea
5. Storing more than one item per bot message: Please create a new idea
6. Drag and drop interface: Please create a new idea

Thank you @hroberts for sending the proper ideas to continue these conversations. I encourage you all to go forth and maximize the potential of your voice, vote, and feedback by actively engaging with those threads, and creating new ideas. Feel free to link them back in this thread so other users can find them and vote for them .

Thank you,
Jenny

[#18]

i agree with the delay timers point. i'm having trouble with the amount of time between messages; the delay is not long enough for the user to read the first message before the next message pushes it up and off the screen.